


(Cause I know) The sound of your heart

by stardustachilles



Series: Acosmist (one who believes nothing exists) [10]
Category: Dysprosium
Genre: Alex gets another tattoo, Alex is 25, F/F, Other, Sara is 18, and she and james talk about high school, big surprise there, sara learns a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 19:56:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10043654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustachilles/pseuds/stardustachilles
Summary: Alex takes Sara with her when she gets a new tattoo.





	

Sara got to Alex’s house around noon, messenger bag slung over her shoulder. The front door was unlocked, mostly because it was a nice neighborhood, but also kind of because Alex was super muscular and good with knives.

Sara didn’t bother to leave her coat or shoes in the entryway, instead walking straight into the living room. Alex was on the couch and James was in the kitchen, based on the clatter in the room. Alex turned back to look at Sara, smiling and reaching out a hand.

Sara may have misunderstood, but she gave Alex a high five. Alex laughed. “Did you bring it?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Sara gestured to her messenger bag. “Of course I brought it.” Sara walked around the couch, sitting down and dropping her messenger bag beside her. Alex lifted an arm and Sara curled under it, pulling her feet up onto the couch as well. An old  _ X-Files _ rerun was playing on the TV above the fireplace.

James came in a couple seconds later. “Okay,” he said. He leaned against the doorframe defeatedly. “It’s official. I can’t boil water. Who actually needs lunch anyway.”

Alex laughed at him and reached out her unoccupied hand, and he walked into it. Alex pulled James down on her other side by a hip. She tapped her head against his shoulder affectionately, curling her arm with his. Sara thought it was cute. James couldn’t have cared less, staring at the TV and letting Alex maneuver him however she wanted.

Alex’s phone went off not twenty minutes later, the obnoxious sound that she set for all of her alarms. Sara groaned when Alex moved, and James shot her an amusedly sympathetic look. They weren’t exactly friends — their only connection was Alex — but Sara liked him.

Alex grabbed her phone from the coffee table, now standing. She tapped a couple buttons. “Let’s go.”

Sara and James stood, and Sara hooked her bag over her shoulder. Sara got to sit in the Jeep’s passenger seat, making James sit in the back, which he seemed a little miffed about. All three of them never rode in the same car.

They got to the tattoo parlor in no time, and it didn’t look as menacing as Sara expected it to. Given, she’d never gone to a tattoo parlor before, but she’d seen them on TV. Alex walked in confidently, but then again she did everything confidently. Sara grabbed the belt loop on the back of her pants and hid behind her a little bit. Alex talked to the lady behind the counter, but Sara didn’t listen to what she was saying.

James followed them in, but instead of standing beside Alex menacingly like he usually did, he went over to the other side of the little lobby-type-thing, and sat down on a couch beside a guy who was already there.

The other guy was more attractive than Sara was willing to admit, with pale skin and black hair in a short undercut. He was wearing a black leather jacket with a tattooed sparrow peeking out of the collar. He had a teardrop tattooed on his left cheekbone, and there were tattoos on his hands. He had an earring in his left ear, and he greeted James like an old friend. Sara reminded herself to ask about him later.

She was brought out of her thoughts when Alex reached backward. Sara pulled her messenger bag off her shoulder and put it in Alex’s hand. Alex pulled it open and got out Sara’s canvas painting. The lady behind the counter took it delicately, smiling at Alex and heading to the back rooms. Alex followed her, handing Sara back her bag, and since Sara was unwilling to let go of Alex, she followed. Sara heard James say goodbye to the guy he was talking to, and follow them.

They sat for a couple minutes and another guy came into the room from another door, a couple things in his hands and a smile on his face. He was blond, not as cute as the guy in the lobby, but he had kind blue eyes. He had no visible tattoos, but he worked at a tattoo parlor, so Sara assumed they were hidden under his clothes.

The guy handed Sara her painting back and smiled at her, then turned to Alex. Sara put her painting away as they talked, but she still wasn’t listening. She watched as Alex gestured with her hands, then got even more distracted when Alex pulled off her shirt.

She unearthed what seemed like miles of tanned, muscular skin between her sports bra and jeans, but no one was distracted as Sara. James kept his eyes on Alex’s face, and the blond guy followed Alex’s hands, showing him where she wanted the tattoo. Alex already had a bunch that had been hidden under her clothes because of a deal she made with her parents before she got her first.

There was a complicated looking equation beneath Alex’s right collarbone, and a sketch of the solar system beneath her left. There was a small circular terrarium on her inner right bicep, and a little ringed planet with three stars around it on her right wrist. There was a NASA symbol over Van Gogh’s  _ Starry Night _ on her left deltoid muscle. On her left forearm, Alex had a tracing of DC’s subway system. On the right side of Alex’s ribcage there was a smattering of three planets, a sun, and some stars. Above her right hip was a record player with the solar system as the record instead.

And those were just the ones Sara could see. She knew there were more under the band of Alex’s high-waisted pants, and Sara couldn’t see the ones on Alex’s back. Alex lay back on the table, eliminating all chance of seeing the ones on her back, and James moved to sit by Alex’s head, offering her his hand, which Alex took. Sara followed his lead and sat slightly behind him.

Alex caught Sara’s eyes and winked at her, rolling her shoulders. Sara didn’t really know what was happening, but pretty soon the little gun thing the blond guy had started buzzing and Alex’s grip on James’s hand went white-knuckled, but Alex didn’t utter a sound.

Sara watched as the ink was systematically stabbed into Alex’s skin. It looked like it would hurt, but Alex gave no indication beside her grip on James’s hand.

Slowly, Sara’s painting formed on the left side of Alex’s ribs. It was of three watercolor planets; the biggest, shades of oranges. Above it and to the left a little bit was a smaller blue and green one, and below that and even farther to the left was pinkish-orange and blue planet, smaller than the other two. Sara had made it when she had first started dating Alex. A shadow was cast on the bottom right of two of the planets.

Alex only took two breaks, after the first, biggest planet, and the uppermost, Earth-like planet. Each time, the blond tattoo artist had gotten her a glass of water, and he had even complimented Sara on her talent once. Each time, Alex released James’s hand to give him a break and pulled Sara into a kiss. Sara didn’t like seeing Alex in pain, but she was getting Sara’s artwork tattooed on her body, so maybe it was worth it.

It had probably been a couple hours, but it seemed like only minutes before the tattoo was complete. Alex had decided to forego an outline, so the only thing the blond man had to do was the color. When he was done, it was almost an exact replica of Sara’s painting, but smaller, about the size of a hand.

Sara couldn’t describe what she felt when Alex had told her she wanted to get her painting tattooed. She hadn’t even shown Alex the painting until recently, and Alex had made her decision immediately. Sara couldn’t imagine making a decision like that so quickly, deciding to get something put permanently on her body with needles. She’d need weeks to decide.

But Alex had been resolute. Sara had tried to convince her to take longer to think about it, but Alex hadn’t listened. After Sara’d left, she had called the tattoo place to set up a consultation.

They finished up, and Alex released James’s hand for the last time. James discreetly shook it out where Alex couldn’t see it. The blond guy, whose name Sara now knew was Neal, put a bandage over Alex’s ribs. Alex put her shirt back on and stood up, talking to Neal a little more, before collecting her things (read: Sara and James) and walking back out to the front.

Alex stopped at the front desk to pay, and Alex traded her credit card for a couple papers from the lady. The lady gave her back her credit card and told her more things, but Sara still wasn’t listening. She was watching James say bye to the guy with the neck tattoo. The did one of those bro-hugs, but it seemed more genuine.

Alex drove them home, Sara in the front again, and they settled on the couch. Alex turned on the TV, and James complained when she set it on another documentary about space, so Alex changed it to old  _ X-Files _ reruns. James sat at one end of the couch, and Alex kicked her feet up into James’s lap. Alex grabbed Sara’s wrist and Sara dropped her bag, and Alex pulled Sara down between her right side and the back of the couch. Sara got comfortable on her side, curling against Alex, who was on her back.

“Hey,” Sara started, not distracting them from anything because both Alex and James had seen this episode before. She directed her question to James. “Who was that guy you were talking to at the shop? With the neck tattoo?”

James gave her a surprised look, because Sara almost never addressed him directly, before answering. “He’s an old friend of mine and Alex’s from high school. One of the kids we ran with. Matthew Keller. He works at the shop now.”

“His boyfriend is the one who gave it to me,” Alex added, nodding her head down at the bandage hidden under her shirt on her side.

Sara rested her head on Alex’s chest when James started talking again. “Neal was such an instigator in high school. Remember sophomore year, that English class?” The question was directed at Alex, whose eyes lit up.

“Work Ethics!” she yelled, sounding both bitter and delighted. “God! I hated that class.”

“Everyone knew you hated that class,” James said. “You were very vocal about it.”

“Our first professional dress day,” Alex inquired, a sly tilt to her lips. Sara was usually happy just to listen to Alex and James talk, but she was curious about this.

“What about it?” she asked, looking up at Alex. Alex’s arm wrapped around her and she nodded at James to tell the story.

“So for Public Speaking — Work Ethics — whatever,” James started, “it was basically a class to set you up for your future job. Other kids probably needed it, but Alex didn’t so she expressed her hatred for the class daily. We had these things called professional dress days, where you had to dress up nice for the day, and despite what one might think, with her mother being on Congress and all, Alex hated dressing up nice when she was a teenager.

“She would say things like ‘this isn’t important enough to dress up for’ and ‘they don’t deserve to see me looking nice’ and ‘I’m never gonna need to get a job anyway — this is pointless’ right in front of the teachers, but they didn’t do anything about it, because they were all scared of Alex and her connections.

“So on the first professional dress day, this idiot,” James gestured to Alex, who flipped him off, “decided that she’s only gonna wear nice clothes to that one class so she can get the grade. So she had PE beforehand, so she changed straight from her PE clothes — which always stunk, by the way; I don’t know why you tried so hard in that class — straight into her nice clothes, and go to class. I had PE and the class after Public Speaking with her, but we didn’t have Public Speaking together. So she comes into fourth hour _ fuming _ —”

“In my defense,” Alex interjected, “the stupid librarian tried to tell me that everything I was doing was wrong, and lowkey that I was going to fail in life, and I wasn’t even allowed to do anything about it at that point in time, so—”

“And,” James cut Alex off, continuing his story, “she drops down into her seat, scaring the poor kid next to her. Then she pulled her t-shirt out of her backpack and straight up  _ ripped  _ her nice shirt off — her mom had to fix the seams later — and threw it in her backpack.”

James was starting to laugh, but he took a breath and kept going through his amusement. “So at this point, she’s sitting there in a marginally modest sports bra, because Alex never wore anything else in high school, and the teacher’s not in the room yet, and the kid next to her is staring in horror, along with the rest of the class. This was sophomore year,” James emphasized.

“And sophomore year Alex wasn’t anything less than absolutely ripped, like, her clothes hid most of it but she had at least a six pack at this point, and she was probably the buffest person in the room. And she just calmly pulls on her t-shirt like it’s completely normal and gets out her books and the teacher walks in and he’s super confused because everybody’s still staring at Alex, while I’m over here laughing my ass off.

“She never gets sent to the principal’s office or anything, because everyone’s too afraid to say anything to the faculty, but it floats around the school for the next wee. Keller told Alex he was disappointed that he didn’t get to see it, and she punched him in the jaw. The kid who was next to Alex later came out as gay, and it may not be related to that incident but I always thought it was ironic.”

“Yes,” Alex input, “That’s my legacy at my high school. I never lived that down.”

By the end of the story, Sara was laughing so hard she was almost crying. James’s face was all scrunched up, and Alex had an exasperated smile on her face. It took the three of them forever to calm down, and Alex and James moved on to other memories from high school. Sara learned more about the people they were friends with, which always interested her.

Two episodes of the show had passed by the time Sara decided she was going to take a nap. She fell asleep to the sounds of Alex and James reminiscing sarcastically, and a little cynically, and the vague beating of Alex’s heart.


End file.
